DISTANCE: 5 miles MAP: OS 134. grid ref 233969. THE WALK Leave the recreation ground in Saxlingham Nethergate and turn right and past a junction to the village sign opposite the school. Turn right and over the green and through the church gate to follow a path which bends left past the tower and along the left edge of the churchyard to a kissing gate. Pass through and a left edge of a field leads to its corner and after a few more paces you turn right over a stile into a meadow. Follow a right edge to a metal gate where cross a stile at its side and turn right and then left into a hedgeless track. Follow the track for approximately 350 yards and when you meet the second crop division continue a few yards further and turn right into a field. Go straight up the slope passing closely to the third tree from the hedge on the left side of the field and eventually through a wide gap into a road. Turn left for a short distance then turn right into a field corner and into a green enclosed path which leads eventually through trees for a quarter mile to a road. Turn left and opposite Chequers Lane by a telephone kiosk you turn right in a farm track. When the track ends you turn left through a gap into a field and turn and follow its long right edge soon with a ditch on your right but just before the end of the field you turn right over a culvert. A short green track leads into another field and you follow a left edge to a road. Turn left but at the end of the first field on your right turn right over a plank bridge into a field. Go straight ahead along a left edge to a corner and over another plank bridge into the next field. Again follow a long left edge curving to a power pole and ignore a path on your left before you reach the field corner. Go ahead over a plank into another field and again follow a left edge to a corner where turn right for a few yards to turn left through a gap in the hedge and over a plank into another field. Turn left a short way into a corner and turn right and again along left edges ignoring a path on your left before reaching the end of the field. Turn right and follow the edge to its end in a crossing lane. Turn left and the lane winds uphill then bends sharply right to a farm then curves left through farm buildings to join another crossing lane. Turn right and the lane winds to a paved road. Turn right but when the road soon bends left you go straight ahead into a green path. Continue now for half mile, ignoring any side turns until you go down a slope and into a clear crossing lane. Go straight over and into a sunken lane which goes uphill and soon swings right then straight over fields to the corner of a wood in which there are the remains of St Mary's Church abandoned in 1688. Turn left into a green path with the wood on your right to the end of the wood and into another track on a corner. Turn left and with a fine view of the John Soane parsonage away to your left you continue to a road. Turn left but quite soon you can turn right into a green path parallel with the road which takes you safely back to the recreation ground. Historical note Saxlingham Nethergate is a beautiful village with a lovingly tended church which lies on a small green between good examples on one side of an Elizabethan manor and on the other a parsonage built by Sir John Soane in 1784. Inside the church are rare examples of stained glass from the 13th to the 15th centuries which are certainly among the best in Norfolk. An interesting citizen of Saxlingham when Soane was building the parsonage and nearby Shotesham Hall was George Watson the miller of Saxlingham Mill. George was a member of the Norwich Revolution Society and an advocate of equal representation for both rich and poor. It was the time of Tom Paine and The Rights of Man and when Norwich had a reputation as a Jacobin City. The agitation for greater democracy was however, put on hold when the price of wheat went up to 57s a combe. "The greatest price I ever received" said Parson Woodforde and the flour mills of Trowse and Hellesdon were attacked by a rioting population. | 
View 
